West Virginia Public Broadcasting has received $31,000 from the Institute for Nonprofit News to develop a mobile application for capturing stories from younger veterans.
INN, formerly the Investigative News Network, announced the grant Wednesday as part of its third round of INNovation Fund winners, consisting of eight grants totaling $223,810.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting received its grant for “Stories for Service,” an app that will encourage veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to tell their stories in photos, text and audio using their cellphones. West Virginia University students will help curate the stories, which will air on the network.
The other winners are:
- WyoFile, $20,000, for traveling to “far-flung” parts of Wyoming to expand its audience and staging five events;
- New Jersey Spotlight, $35,000 for a one-day event, “The Symposium for NJ Cities”;
- Seattle Globalist, $17,200 for a series of community media training workshops to train citizen journalists;
- Investigative Post, $35,000 to purchase Facebook and Twitter posts as an experiment to build audience loyalty;
- The Banyan Project, $35,000 for a digital tool to foster engagement in comment sections;
- Connecticut Health Investigative Team, $20,000 for a daylong health fair; and
- The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, $30,610 to begin a membership program.
The INNovation Fund is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Winners were selected from 38 submissions.
“The INNovation Fund continues to be a great opportunity for newsrooms who dare to experiment with journalism and new revenue streams, and an important model for those who want to learn from these experiments,” said Marie Gilot, Knight Foundation program officer for journalism, in a statement.